2024 Division I ICT: specific question discussion

[Important Bird Area]

Disclaimer:

If you are planning to play a mirror of the 2024 ICT set, please do not read further posts in this thread. (There has been an expression of interest for a British mirror in summer 2024.)

This is your question-specific discussion for the 2024 Division I ICT set.

[efleisig]

Could someone post the Cherubini tossup, please?

[machgielis]

I'd be grateful to whomever posts the Pan Tadeusz tossup.

I'll post more once I've re-read some packets, but for now, I must say that the Matthias Gruenewald tossup had at least one issue that really should've been caught in a set at this level.

For any work of art whose creator is known, the creator of that work is clearly an easy clue and should not be name-dropped before the giveaway. The creators of the Isenheim Altarpiece are Gruenewald and Hagenauer. It's a simple binary association, and neither of them is really notable for anything else. Name-dropping Hagenauer in the first line of a four-dot tossup is... puzzling. Best case, the tossup gets powered by the vast majority of arts players, worst case, it creates a game of chicken in which some think you're trying to bait them to neg.

[rhn26]

Could I see the tossups on Les Chants de Maldoror and the commonlink on The Emigrants?

Overall, I thought the literature was very enjoyable to play and it clued a diverse variety of genres and geographies. I did notice a relative lack of short fiction tossups, with the Kawabata being only one I remember as pure shortfic (though there were a couple other early shortfic clues, e.g. Vonnegut and Munro).

[benchapman]

I am unsure of the wisdom of selecting Krasnogorsk as an answerline. When the media reported on the terrorist attack there in March, it was referred to as a "Moscow attack" or "Moscow concert hall attack" and Krasnogorsk was usually referred to with some variant of "a Moscow suburb" or "the outskirts of Moscow". I appreciate the difficulty in choosing good CE answers and clues given that it is a constantly evolving topic, but I do think this question asked for a rather peripheral detail of an important topic, considering how players would naturally learn things about it. That being said, I did enjoy the CE (and the set) on the whole and appreciate all the effort put in by the writers and editors!

[ClevelandCavaliers]

I enjoyed the history in this set a lot, particularly the Douglas MacArthur and China tossups, which asked about important historical events in a creative way, as well as the Jewish Bund, which is not asked about enough. I wanted to echo Richard's point that there seemed to be very few short fiction tossups, especially compared to poetry and drama. There also seemed to be a shortage of short fiction bonuses.

I would like to see the Curtis LeMay tossup, as I found one of the clues somewhat confusing. Could that be pasted?

[Important Bird Area]

Could someone post the Cherubini tossup, please?

This composer wrote the aria "Del fiero duol" for an opera revived in 1953 as a vehicle for Maria Callas. This composer accidentally distributed his Song on the Death of Haydn five years before Haydn actually died. A fortissimo tam-tam strike precedes the choir's entry in the "Dies irae" movement of a work this man wrote to commemorate Louis (*) XVI's execution, which was later performed at Beethoven's funeral. For 10 points—name this Italian composer of a Requiem in C minor and the comic opera Medee.

[Important Bird Area]

I'd be grateful to whomever posts the Pan Tadeusz tossup.

Near the end of this poem, a stirring dulcimer concert is given by a Jewish innkeeper. The cookbook Compendium ferculorum influenced the description of the great banquet that opens this poem's twelfth and final book, at which a notary proposes to the caretaker Telimena. In this epic, a bear is shot dead by Father (*) Robak, who later reveals that he is the protagonist's father, Jacek Soplica. An apostrophe to Lithuania opens—for 10 points—what Adam Mickiewicz poem, the national epic of Poland?

[Important Bird Area]

Could I see the tossups on Les Chants de Maldoror and the commonlink on The Emigrants?

A character in this book creates a pit filled with lice, which he then lets loose. This 19th-century book copies entries from Chenu's Encyclopedia of Natural History verbatim, illustrating its author's theory that "plagiarism is necessary." A "chance encounter between a (*) sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table" is praised by this book, whose protagonist has sex with a shark. For 10 points—what long French prose poem about the embodiment of evil was written by the Comte de Lautreamont?

In a novel with this title, Robert is forced to share a room with Arvid, who is nicknamed "the Bull of Nybacken" for supposedly impregnating a heifer. The namesake first novel of a series about Karl Oskar Nilssen's family bears this title, as does a semi-autobiographical 1992 book whose narrator relates stories about Max (*) Ferber, Henry Selwyn, and other Jewish exiles from Germany. That W. G. Sebald novel shares—for 10 points—what title with a Vilhelm Moberg series about Swedes moving to America?

[Important Bird Area]

I would like to see the Curtis LeMay tossup, as I found one of the clues somewhat confusing.

In response to a question from Jack Nelson, this man spoke glowingly about island rats that were "fatter" and "healthier" than before. He supposedly once growled that his lit cigar "wouldn't dare" ignite fumes in a cockpit. In Operation Starvation, this general ordered the mining of ports such as (*) Kobe. He complained about the public's "phobia" of nuclear weapons as the 1968 running mate of George Wallace. For 10 points—in World War II, what air force general organized the firebombing of Japan?

[liamstarnes27]

Could I see the tossup on Somalia? Thanks.

[Important Bird Area]

Could I see the tossup on Somalia? Thanks.

This country prepares a bread called sabaayad that closely resembles Indian paratha. This country's cuisine uses a spice blend similar to garam masala that is called xawaash. Some street vendors in this country's cities of Kismayo and (*) Berbera sell local pasta dishes as a legacy of Italian colonialism. Like a smaller neighbor, this country prepares a sourdough flatbread called anjeero that is often compared to Ethiopia's injera bread. For 10 points—name this country on the Horn of Africa.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

A few things:

• As can happen with a semi-automated system, there were some packet feng shui issues; in particular, I was reluctant to buzz on the tossup about the region of "southern China" in packet (I think) 2, after the same packet had a history tossup on "converting China to Christianity".
• Can I get a list of every question in the DI set that was substantively about the American Civil War, and another list of every question in the DI set that was substantively about World War II? It seemed like, once again, a collegiate NAQT set asked about these two topics too many times over the course of a single set; seeing it written out would help assess how true that is.
  • Of the two Civil War ones that came to mind immediately, the "UK and Confederacy" tossup was kind of nifty in that it got into the international and diplomatic ramifications of the war,
  • but the "Battle of Franklin" tossup was an almost parodically bad "tactics-bowl" question of a type that almost no one else in quizbowl writes anymore, for the good reason that they're uninteresting to almost everyone who actually plays this game. If it requires questions like this to fill out the Military_History distribution, perhaps it should be shrunk.
• On the flip side, I appreciated the attempts to take some bold swings at underexplored American history topics, such as the tossup on changes to divorce law in _California_ and the introduction of _physical education_ to U.S. schools. I do think those particular swings were misses, due to lack of specific or deep knowledge in the field; I'd be surprised if either had any good buzzes before the giveaway or close to it. But I'd rather have had another tossup like this than the paint-by-numbers spin-the-Civil-War-battle.
• It was pretty silly that "Marsellus Wallace's wife" and "Mrs. Wallace" weren't accepted for the tossup on _Mia_ Wallace from Pulp Fiction. I know Characters Have Names, but it seems like both of those given answers uniquely identify the desired character. (Full disclosure: I picked this up on a power-vulch and I wasn't the only one.)
  • (Perhaps the threshold for Having Names-ness should be lower for [some] film questions than lit questions, generally speaking? A lot of film discourse, especially on one-off films with big star actors, is on the level of "Tom Cruise's character from Risky Business".)
• It was cool, and in line with broader circuit trends, to see more of the visual art questions involve art-history-as-such rather than just visual details of works; the questions on Mr. Gersaint (of shop-sign fame!) and the Tanguy family were cool, if very hard, examples of this. (I didn't like the "Whistler's parents" tossup as much, since they aren't really discussed together as a reified group -- was it FA: or MI:, given that a lot of the details about George Washington Whistler were not about art? Either way, it might have played better as a bonus.)
• Strongly concur with Ben on "Krasnogorsk,"; I had missed this news story altogether pre-ICT, but when looking up information about it afterwards in Western online media it was virtually always described as "[outside] Moscow". I'd be curious to hear how many rooms converted this (of rooms that heard it, given that it was tossup 23).

[Important Bird Area]

The protest committee did end up accepting the descriptive answers for Mia Wallace.

Civil War content:

Battle of Franklin
Confederacy and the UK
Edwin Stanton
reference in the leadin to the common link on the surname "Palmer"

Jefferson C. Davis/March to the Sea/Modoc War
Montgomery Meigs/Fredericksburg/Arlington cemetery
bonus with Knights of the Golden Circle and ex parte Milligan content

World War II:

China (Stilwell/Ledo Road/Flying Tigers clues)
Joe Kennedy
Curtis LeMay
Douglas MacArthur
reference to the Mosquito in the common link on "de Haviland"

Wannsee conference
Witold Pilecki
Reinhold Heydrich
MI: bonus with Goebbels
geography bonus with the Louisiana Maneuvers
raising the flag on Iwo Jima

(Both of these lists may well be somewhat incomplete- I both searched for the name of the war and read through the categories most likely to contain military history material.)

The overall level of content here seems fine to me. As is sometimes the case, I think it would be possible to adjust the subdistributions a bit (a little strange that there are three tossups about the later stages of the Pacific theater, and the bonuses have a cluster of material about Nazi atrocities in eastern Europe).

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

So, here's the Battle of Franklin tossup:

Soldiers wounded at this battle were nursed at Carnton plantation by the "Widow of the South," Carrie McGavock. The defenders in this battle had barely escaped entrapment at the prior day's Battle of Spring Hill. Patrick Cleburne and States Rights Gist were among six Confederate generals (*) killed in an action from this battle dubbed the "Pickett's Charge of the West." John Schofield beat John Bell Hood just south of Nashville in--for 10 points--what 1864 battle at a town named for a Founding Father?

answer: Battle of _Franklin_

None of the clues in this question were what I'd consider "tactics-bowl." The clues are, in order: a widow who became a Lost Cause icon for her role nursing wounded soldiers; the immediate leadup to the battle; the most famous and consequential incident of the battle, which claimed more Confederate generals as casualties than any other battle of the war; and the giveaway. The second and third sentences do test knowledge of the events of the Battle of Franklin, but none of them require knowledge of flanking maneuvers, sunken roads, or actions of the 17th Welch Fusiliers like bad questions of the early 2010s.

I'm not a military history fan either, but I do think it's fair for a set to have a single tossup on a Civil War battle. There are still Civil War heads both in and outside of quizbowl, and I don't think this answerline was impossibly obscure; I tried to pick from among the easiest battles that you couldn't toss up at SCT or Regionals. It does seem like there was quite a lot of Civil War content in the bonuses, though.

[cwasims]

This composer wrote the aria "Del fiero duol" for an opera revived in 1953 as a vehicle for Maria Callas. This composer accidentally distributed his Song on the Death of Haydn five years before Haydn actually died. A fortissimo tam-tam strike precedes the choir's entry in the "Dies irae" movement of a work this man wrote to commemorate Louis (*) XVI's execution, which was later performed at Beethoven's funeral. For 10 points—name this Italian composer of a Requiem in C minor and the comic opera Medee.

I can't speak for Eve, but when hearing this tossup at game speed, I was pretty confused by the first line, which made it sound like the composer in question was a modern one who was for some reason asked to write an aria "in the style of" the opera clued for the 1953 revival. The rest of the clues are cool - I didn't realize his Requiem was written to commemorate Louis XVI's execution.

The most frustrating moment at this tournament for me by far was being negged outright for saying "CPI" for price indices. I think these points are where the divergence between answer line practices between NAQT and ACF are most jarring - if I had written a tossup on this answer line for Regionals, this would have been an automatic accept in the answer line. I guess the NAQT correctness rules are what they are, but I thought about the following situation: presumably, a later clue said something to the effect of "the 'consumer' type of this thing... [rest of clue]" and someone might answer "the consumer price index" (emphasis in italics). To be negged for adding the word "consumer", which would here be said mainly to cue the answer, while emphasizing the actual answer seems really off to me. Is this truly what NAQT intends?

On the other hand, I was very happy to be rewarded for owning Acemoglu's Introduction to Modern Economic Growth earlier in the tournament. I would say that overall, ICT consistently has great 4-dot economics content.

[theMoMA]

The "price index" answer line reflects the related response rule. The primary answer is the broad category of price indexes. Related responses not in the same general class of concepts (like "Consumer Price Index" or "CPI," which is a specific statistic rather than a broad category of statistics) are evaluated under the criteria that "a related response will generally be accepted if the required part of the answer appears in an unmodified or possessive form" and "for a related response to be accepted or prompted, it must contain a modified form of the entirety of the required portion of the answer." (The latter is exemplified by rejecting "Daniel _Shays_" when the underlined portion of the answer is "_Shays' Rebellion_".)

Based on those factors, the answer line accepted "Consumer _Price Index_" but not "_CPI_", because the latter did not contain an acceptable or promptable answer, as I judged when writing the answer line. Analogously, for instance, if we were writing a tossup on the adjective "Canadian," we would accept "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" but reject "CBC." That said, the editors just now were discussing and did find some sources that list "PI" as a shortened version of "price index," so in retrospect, if we'd included a prompt on "PI" in the answer line, we would have prompted on "CPI," and perhaps we would have decided on a protest that "CPI" should have been promptable. (I didn't come across "PI" in the various reference sources I used to write that tossup, which was why "PI" wasn't included in the answer line.)

In short, answer lines are complicated and we try to be consistent and as thorough as possible, but there are still gray areas and cracks; I just wanted to write this up to show that there is a reason it appeared the way it did. In the final analysis, "CPI" does not fit most of the clues for the question but contains part of a plausibly promptable response of "PI," so it probably should have been prompted rather than rejected outright, and I apologize for that oversight.

[Makorn]

Related responses not in the same general class of concepts (like "Consumer Price Index" or "CPI," which is a specific statistic rather than a broad category of statistics) are evaluated under the criteria that "a related response will generally be accepted if the required part of the answer appears in an unmodified or possessive form" and "for a related response to be accepted or prompted, it must contain a modified form of the entirety of the required portion of the answer."

Based on those factors, the answer line accepted "Consumer _Price Index_" but not "_CPI_", because the latter did not contain an acceptable or promptable answer, as I judged when writing the answer line. Analogously, for instance, if we were writing a tossup on the adjective "Canadian," we would accept "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" but reject "CBC."

For a related response to be accepted or prompted, it must contain a modified form of the entirety of the required portion of the answer. For instance, Daniel Shays is neither acceptable nor promptable for Shays’s Rebellion (but Shays’s Rebellion could be acceptable for Daniel Shays).

Why is this specifically a rule? I don't see why any question should explicitly rule out an answer from someone who indicates clear knowledge of the subject. Assuming that the CPI was actually clued in the question (which I believe it was), I believe most other formats (ACF, PACE, etc.) would have at least prompted (e.g. by asking "which is a kind of what general metric?"), and to have NAQT's rules explicitly take the opposing stance feels weird and unintuitive.

[Mike Bentley]

So, here's the Battle of Franklin tossup:

Soldiers wounded at this battle were {nursed} at Carnton {plantation} by the "Widow of the South," Carrie McGavock. The defenders in this battle had barely escaped entrapment at the prior day's Battle of Spring Hill. Patrick Cleburne and {States Rights Gist} were among six Confederate generals (*) killed in an action from this battle dubbed the "Pickett's Charge of the West." John Schofield beat John Bell Hood just south of Nashville in--for 10 points--what 1864 battle at a town named for a Founding Father?

answer: Battle of _Franklin_

None of the clues in this question were what I'd consider "tactics-bowl." The clues are, in order: a widow who became a Lost Cause icon for her role nursing wounded soldiers; the immediate leadup to the battle; the most famous and consequential incident of the battle, which claimed more Confederate generals as casualties than any other battle of the war; and the giveaway. The second and third sentences do test knowledge of the events of the Battle of Franklin, but none of them require knowledge of flanking maneuvers, sunken roads, or actions of the 17th Welch Fusiliers like bad questions of the early 2010s.

I'm not a military history fan either, but I do think it's fair for a set to have a single tossup on a Civil War battle. There are still Civil War heads both in and outside of quizbowl, and I don't think this answerline was impossibly obscure; I tried to pick from among the easiest battles that you couldn't toss up at SCT or Regionals. It does seem like there was quite a lot of Civil War content in the bonuses, though.

I guess the question here is whether at this point in quizbowl tossing up something like the 15th most famous Civil War battle is a good idea. If I was the editor, that would be a definite "no" for me. Maybe there's stats to prove me wrong that there's still a pocket of people with super deep knowledge of stuff like this, but I'm doubtful. And while several of these clues aren't strictly tactics, very few of these are personally interesting to me. I suspect this is due to NAQT length limits where you can't give some of the context Matt Bollinger mentions that might make this more compelling.

[Jason Puncheon]

I was extremely disappointed with the pop culture in this set, for the most part. I suppose I'll talk about two questions in particular that I did not enjoy, those being on "Last Night" and "Anti-Hero," which I think struggle from the same problem, and are perhaps indicative of a larger problem in general with the role of trash in quiz bowl. Really, I think the main problem with both of these questions is that they just suffer from baffling answerline selection: why, at a tournament the difficulty of of D1 ICT, are we tossing up recent smash-hit singles? This just seems completely incongruous to how one would approach writing any other category at ICT. I'm not saying it's impossible to execute an interesting, difficulty appropriate question on a recent popular single, but it's certainly not an easy task, and it's made much harder when the singles you choose to write about are bland pop-country and one of the most forgettable Taylor Swift tracks ever. I don't see any reason why pop culture questions at ICT couldn't be about more difficult and worthwhile topics. Wouldn't this be more in the spirit of the tournament?

The sports questions, if not a little bland, seemed reasonably well written overall. I was curious though: what was the breakdown like for this category? It felt like there was a decent amount of baseball and basketball, but I don't recall any football questions other than 1 that only got played in the third place game.

[Important Bird Area]

The sports questions, if not a little bland, seemed reasonably well written overall. I was curious though: what was the breakdown like for this category? It felt like there was a decent amount of baseball and basketball, but I don't recall any football questions other than 1 that only got played in the third place game.

baseball 1/2
football 1/1
basketball 1/1
minor sports 1/1
any sports 2/2 (these ended up being one each baseball, basketball, golf, and tennis)

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I don't recall any football questions other than 1 that only got played in the third place game.

football 1/1

The football tossup was tossup 23 or 24 of packet 1, I think, so people didn't hear it

[Jason Puncheon]

I don't recall any football questions other than 1 that only got played in the third place game.

football 1/1

The football tossup was tossup 23 or 24 of packet 1, I think, so people didn't hear it

the evil of the timed round strikes again....

[theMoMA]

Why is this specifically a rule? I don't see why any question should explicitly rule out an answer from someone who indicates clear knowledge of the subject. Assuming that the CPI was actually clued in the question (which I believe it was), I believe most other formats (ACF, PACE, etc.) would have at least prompted (e.g. by asking "which is a kind of what general metric?"), and to have NAQT's rules explicitly take the opposing stance feels weird and unintuitive.

My gloss is that the rule exists to draw a clear line between what is acceptable/promptable and what is not, because the standard of "indicating clear knowledge" is not consistent and wouldn't provide a uniform guide for writing answer lines or judging protests. Generally speaking, I don't think it's a good practice to accept or prompt on responses because they seem somewhat related to the answer line. I think questions should generally should have tight answers and clues that point unambiguously to those answers, rather than existing as sort of a floating miasma of related concepts where players can expect that saying something in the general neighborhood will get them on the prompt train.

Of course, some related responses will inevitably trigger accept or prompt situations even if a question is tightly written, because some clues may invite related responses that will contain all or part of the required response. You then need a rule by which to evaluate those responses. I'm sure there are many ways of doing it, and I'm not sure my rule would be exactly the NAQT rule, but the NAQT rule produces consistent results and is available for all to see, so it's fine for its purpose.

(In the case of the "price index" tossup, I think "CPI" is probably promptable if "PI" is promptable, as discussed above, but the player is already misapprehending the question by answering one statistic instead of a type of statistic; in any event, the inquiry is whether the answer actually contains a promptable answer, not whether it "indicates clear knowledge" or something looser like that, because under that standard, I think arguably answering one statistic instead of a family of statistics indicates lack of clear knowledge rather than its possession.)

[cwasims]

The "price index" answer line reflects the related response rule. The primary answer is the broad category of price indexes. Related responses not in the same general class of concepts (like "Consumer Price Index" or "CPI," which is a specific statistic rather than a broad category of statistics) are evaluated under the criteria that "a related response will generally be accepted if the required part of the answer appears in an unmodified or possessive form" and "for a related response to be accepted or prompted, it must contain a modified form of the entirety of the required portion of the answer." (The latter is exemplified by rejecting "Daniel _Shays_" when the underlined portion of the answer is "_Shays' Rebellion_".)

Based on those factors, the answer line accepted "Consumer _Price Index_" but not "_CPI_", because the latter did not contain an acceptable or promptable answer, as I judged when writing the answer line. Analogously, for instance, if we were writing a tossup on the adjective "Canadian," we would accept "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" but reject "CBC." That said, the editors just now were discussing and did find some sources that list "PI" as a shortened version of "price index," so in retrospect, if we'd included a prompt on "PI" in the answer line, we would have prompted on "CPI," and perhaps we would have decided on a protest that "CPI" should have been promptable. (I didn't come across "PI" in the various reference sources I used to write that tossup, which was why "PI" wasn't included in the answer line.)

In short, answer lines are complicated and we try to be consistent and as thorough as possible, but there are still gray areas and cracks; I just wanted to write this up to show that there is a reason it appeared the way it did. In the final analysis, "CPI" does not fit most of the clues for the question but contains part of a plausibly promptable response of "PI," so it probably should have been prompted rather than rejected outright, and I apologize for that oversight.

Thanks for the response, Andrew. This policy about acronyms, especially in a case like this, is pretty baffling to me - I can understand more in the CBC case, where you are not even giving the type of answer that is sought (an organization instead of an adjective) but in the CPI case you are literally giving the most common way of phrasing an acceptable answer that also fits the indicator of the question! I hope future NAQT editors will consider explicitly accepting answers like these. I will also note that, although "price indices" are indeed a more general phenomenon, I imagine almost all of the clues about measurement (as opposed to, say, definitions based on the Laspeyres index, etc.) are effectively about the CPI, given that is by far the price index that real-world economists and statisticians care the most about.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

So, here's the Battle of Franklin tossup:

Soldiers wounded at this battle were {nursed} at Carnton {plantation} by the "Widow of the South," Carrie McGavock. The defenders in this battle had barely escaped entrapment at the prior day's Battle of Spring Hill. Patrick Cleburne and {States Rights Gist} were among six Confederate generals (*) killed in an action from this battle dubbed the "Pickett's Charge of the West." John Schofield beat John Bell Hood just south of Nashville in--for 10 points--what 1864 battle at a town named for a Founding Father?

answer: Battle of _Franklin_

None of the clues in this question were what I'd consider "tactics-bowl." The clues are, in order: a widow who became a Lost Cause icon for her role nursing wounded soldiers; the immediate leadup to the battle; the most famous and consequential incident of the battle, which claimed more Confederate generals as casualties than any other battle of the war; and the giveaway. The second and third sentences do test knowledge of the events of the Battle of Franklin, but none of them require knowledge of flanking maneuvers, sunken roads, or actions of the 17th Welch Fusiliers like bad questions of the early 2010s.

I'm not a military history fan either, but I do think it's fair for a set to have a single tossup on a Civil War battle. There are still Civil War heads both in and outside of quizbowl, and I don't think this answerline was impossibly obscure; I tried to pick from among the easiest battles that you couldn't toss up at SCT or Regionals. It does seem like there was quite a lot of Civil War content in the bonuses, though.

I guess the question here is whether at this point in quizbowl tossing up something like the 15th most famous Civil War battle is a good idea. If I was the editor, that would be a definite "no" for me. Maybe there's stats to prove me wrong that there's still a pocket of people with super deep knowledge of stuff like this, but I'm doubtful. And while several of these clues aren't strictly tactics, very few of these are personally interesting to me. I suspect this is due to NAQT length limits where you can't give some of the context Matt Bollinger mentions that might make this more compelling.

It's a matter of taste I suppose. I read Battle Cry of Freedom a few years back, and the Franklin-Nashville campaign stuck out in my memory as one of the more interesting sagas in that book, so when it was time to fill in a Military_History need I went for it. (Basically, the Western Theater/George Thomas' career put the lie to the [admittedly old] myth that the Confederate generals were all tactical geniuses facing an unwinnable war). I can see how the clues, as written, wouldn't bring out the interesting aspects of the episode, but as you mention you have to economize with NAQT length limits.

I do not think this one tossup at all reflects the general feel of the history distribution, where I think we mixed in a larger number of social + cultural history topics than we did in previous years. A lot of my editing work was kicking and replacing questions until the great-man-bowl quotient was down to an acceptable level. The tossups written for this purpose specifically were: Mesopotamian scribes, veils, the CSA and the UK (carried over from last year), the Burr Conspiracy, the South of China, vampires, the historiographical work of the Andersons, the Plague of Athens, the Teamsters union, and tulips from the Ottoman Tulip period. We also revamped the history distribution this past summer to allow for a larger amount of world history. I'm curious how people felt about these questions + if the effort to ask these topics in a different way came through.

[theMoMA]

It's not a policy about acronyms per se, just a policy about whether a related response actually contains the entirety of the actual required part of the answer. I don't want to belabor this point too much, especially because "CPI" should probably have been prompted given the promptability of "PI," but I want to illustrate something about the importance of having a rule like this (even though there are probably several others ways to do it). We're all used to the idea that some kinds of "category errors" always result in a neg; if you hear the clue "Mrs. Joe is the protagonist's sister in a novel by this man" and say Great Expectations, no one thinks you should get points or a prompt. Saying e.g. "Canadian Broadcast Corporation" when every clue is asking about "this adjective" is basically the same category error, but the general expectation is that it should be accepted, not because it's correct for every clue, but only because it has the word "Canadian" in it. In my analysis of this kind of rule, it should be strictly tied to the words the player said and mapping them precisely onto the required or promptable parts of the answer line, because we're talking about accepting or prompting on answers that, strictly speaking, are actually incorrect. The idea that this can somehow be governed by a loose standard doesn't make sense and would provide no real rationale for rejecting author/work conflation while accepting or prompting on other category errors. (This is more a follow-up from my early comment on the rationale of avoiding "indicating clear knowledge" as a standard than a response to Chris, just to be clear.)

The question text is below, just in case anyone wants to see it. The second clue is about the CPI, although the second clause of the clue is more general.

A statistic of this type that uses a geometric mean "ideal" calculation is used by forecasters and is called the PCE. In 1996 the U.S. followed the Boskin Commission's recommendation to "chain" time series data to construct this kind of statistic, which can be calculated using methods named for Hermann (*) Paasche ["HAIR"-mahn PAH-shuh] or Etienne Laspeyres [ay-t'yen lah-pair]. The GDP deflator serves the same function as—for 10 points—what kind of statistic that uses a "market basket" to estimate the inflation rate, exemplified by the CPI?

answer: price index(es) (or price indices; accept consumer price index or PCE price index or personal consumption expenditures price index; prompt on "index(es)" or "indices"; before "deflator," prompt on "deflator"; reject "CPI")

[theMoMA]

I was extremely disappointed with the pop culture in this set, for the most part. I suppose I'll talk about two questions in particular that I did not enjoy, those being on "Last Night" and "Anti-Hero," which I think struggle from the same problem, and are perhaps indicative of a larger problem in general with the role of trash in quiz bowl. Really, I think the main problem with both of these questions is that they just suffer from baffling answerline selection: why, at a tournament the difficulty of of D1 ICT, are we tossing up recent smash-hit singles? This just seems completely incongruous to how one would approach writing any other category at ICT. I'm not saying it's impossible to execute an interesting, difficulty appropriate question on a recent popular single, but it's certainly not an easy task, and it's made much harder when the singles you choose to write about are bland pop-country and one of the most forgettable Taylor Swift tracks ever. I don't see any reason why pop culture questions at ICT couldn't be about more difficult and worthwhile topics. Wouldn't this be more in the spirit of the tournament?

I don't really understand this critique. Many ICT questions are on relatively easy answers, to the extent "recent smash-hit singles" are even particularly easy answer lines, which I doubt is generally the case from a conversion perspective. The Wallen tossup (in your room) did not get answered early, so your own experience (at least for that question) did not involve the tournament detouring from its usual rigor for one extremely easy pop music question. I have no real investment in asking about chart hits from the 2020s, and I don't particularly enjoy such questions, but clearly they're a part of what players should be on notice to prepare for if they're going to take pop music seriously as a category. I probably would not have written these tossups because I share your lack of interest in these topics, but they don't strike me as a departure from the "spirit" of ICT or whatever, and I don't think the tournament would be better served by having questions that are even harder, when I have no reason to believe these questions were particularly easy. The tournament requires players to take popular culture seriously as a subject, which may require players to prepare for and know things about areas they don't necessarily care about.

[theMoMA]

Just to add to Matt's comments a bit, I think there's a danger in swinging too far in the opposite direction on stuff like "Civil War battles," because if the occasional tossup on e.g. the Battle of Franklin is no longer allowed, then we're essentially saying that there's very little worth knowing about the Battle of Franklin and players can safely put it out of mind as a possible tossup answer or thing to know about in depth. That doesn't strike me as a good posture regarding this specific battle (although it's on the more difficult side) or for Civil War battles more generally, although I don't want there to be a ton of battle tossups in every set or whatever.

[Serpentine284]

I was extremely disappointed with the pop culture in this set, for the most part. I suppose I'll talk about two questions in particular that I did not enjoy, those being on "Last Night" and "Anti-Hero," which I think struggle from the same problem, and are perhaps indicative of a larger problem in general with the role of trash in quiz bowl. Really, I think the main problem with both of these questions is that they just suffer from baffling answerline selection: why, at a tournament the difficulty of of D1 ICT, are we tossing up recent smash-hit singles? This just seems completely incongruous to how one would approach writing any other category at ICT. I'm not saying it's impossible to execute an interesting, difficulty appropriate question on a recent popular single, but it's certainly not an easy task, and it's made much harder when the singles you choose to write about are bland pop-country and one of the most forgettable Taylor Swift tracks ever. I don't see any reason why pop culture questions at ICT couldn't be about more difficult and worthwhile topics. Wouldn't this be more in the spirit of the tournament?

Hopefully this won't get too off topic (and I suppose I'd be OK moving this into a different thread), but I absolutely disagree with this take. I believe ICT should, and successfully did, make an effort to ask about more recent trends and hits in popular music. Yes, it is different to how writing is approached in any other category at this difficulty, but pop culture has to be written a lot different than any other category. There isn't a set canon to study from, and chances are 99% of players are not carding pop culture to get questions at ICT. Pop culture is also by far the most imbalanced category. With that in mind, the best way for the pop culture to appeal to and be gettable by the greatest proportion of players is to ask about the biggest acts in music. I'm not personally a fan of Morgan Wallen, and Anti-Hero is nowhere near my favorite Taylor Swift song, but I thought both of these questions were great steps in the right direction of how pop music should be asked about at this level. Writing about harder artists (like Caroline Polachek from last year's ICT) can be rewarding to some but really punishing to others, and I think it's better to shoot for easier answerlines with harder clues rather than harder answerlines. And while I do also feel that the two tossups you mentioned weren't "worthwhile" to my tastes, it probably was very worthwhile to fans of these artists in Quiz Bowl.

[Mike Bentley]

Just to add to Matt's comments a bit, I think there's a danger in swinging too far in the opposite direction on stuff like "Civil War battles," because if the occasional tossup on e.g. the Battle of Franklin is no longer allowed, then we're essentially saying that there's very little worth knowing about the Battle of Franklin and players can safely put it out of mind as a possible tossup answer or thing to know about in depth. That doesn't strike me as a good posture regarding this specific battle (although it's on the more difficult side) or for Civil War battles more generally, although I don't want there to be a ton of battle tossups in every set or whatever.

I think there are plenty of ways of testing Civil War knowledge. Some could even reward detailed knowledge of this particular battle or campaign. It just feels like this one is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of playability and notability. Having not seen the set apart from the answer lines Matt mentioned, it sounds like this particular tossup was an outlier in leaning into ye olde NAQT American History.

[modernhemalurgist]

The lead-in to the unit interval tossup is not unique to the unit interval; any closed interval can be the fiber of a compact Mobius strip over S-1. I think this clue came from the Wolfram page on fiber bundles, which is just giving an example fiber bundle construction of the Mobius strip (there are many). Indeed, the Wikipedia page for fiber bundles describes a Mobius strip as "a bundle of the line segment over the circle," which is more generally accurate. Also, I don't really see the point of requiring the words "unit interval" here, since 99% of the time in math, this set is called [0,1], or just I. Great idea though!

[Jason Puncheon]

I was extremely disappointed with the pop culture in this set, for the most part. I suppose I'll talk about two questions in particular that I did not enjoy, those being on "Last Night" and "Anti-Hero," which I think struggle from the same problem, and are perhaps indicative of a larger problem in general with the role of trash in quiz bowl. Really, I think the main problem with both of these questions is that they just suffer from baffling answerline selection: why, at a tournament the difficulty of of D1 ICT, are we tossing up recent smash-hit singles? This just seems completely incongruous to how one would approach writing any other category at ICT. I'm not saying it's impossible to execute an interesting, difficulty appropriate question on a recent popular single, but it's certainly not an easy task, and it's made much harder when the singles you choose to write about are bland pop-country and one of the most forgettable Taylor Swift tracks ever. I don't see any reason why pop culture questions at ICT couldn't be about more difficult and worthwhile topics. Wouldn't this be more in the spirit of the tournament?

I don't really understand this critique. Many ICT questions are on relatively easy answers, to the extent "recent smash-hit singles" are even particularly easy answer lines, which I doubt is generally the case from a conversion perspective. The Wallen tossup (in your room) did not get answered early, so your own experience (at least for that question) did not involve the tournament detouring from its usual rigor for one extremely easy pop music question. I have no real investment in asking about chart hits from the 2020s, and I don't particularly enjoy such questions, but clearly they're a part of what players should be on notice to prepare for if they're going to take pop music seriously as a category. I probably would not have written these tossups because I share your lack of interest in these topics, but they don't strike me as a departure from the "spirit" of ICT or whatever, and I don't think the tournament would be better served by having questions that are even harder, when I have no reason to believe these questions were particularly easy. The tournament requires players to take popular culture seriously as a subject, which may require players to prepare for and know things about areas they don't necessarily care about.

I suppose you're right that being an easy answerline in and of itself does not make for a bad question at ICT, but I think due to the nature of trash, questions on recent popular things are going to be much more difficult to make work. This is compounded when you are writing on a specific single instead of a artist or album: the amount of clues is just so much smaller. This leads to leadins like that of the Morgan Wallen tossup: no offense to any "Our Last Night" fans in quiz bowl, but a fringe scene band from the 2000s who are desperate to stay relevant by going viral with hardcore versions of huge chart hits just doesn't seem like the type of trash knowledge we should be striving to reward. This is, I suppose, my main gripe with the tossups I mentioned: they are on really easy topics, AND I just don't feel like they are all that important. If we are going to "take pop music seriously" as a category, I feel like we should be probing for topics that more people in quiz bowl are bound to care about or find artistically engaging. Should we all start reading Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid novels to "take modern literature more seriously as a category?"

[Jason Puncheon]

Hopefully this won't get too off topic (and I suppose I'd be OK moving this into a different thread), but I absolutely disagree with this take. I believe ICT should, and successfully did, make an effort to ask about more recent trends and hits in popular music. Yes, it is different to how writing is approached in any other category at this difficulty, but pop culture has to be written a lot different than any other category. There isn't a set canon to study from, and chances are 99% of players are not carding pop culture to get questions at ICT. Pop culture is also by far the most imbalanced category. With that in mind, the best way for the pop culture to appeal to and be gettable by the greatest proportion of players is to ask about the biggest acts in music. I'm not personally a fan of Morgan Wallen, and Anti-Hero is nowhere near my favorite Taylor Swift song, but I thought both of these questions were great steps in the right direction of how pop music should be asked about at this level. Writing about harder artists (like Caroline Polachek from last year's ICT) can be rewarding to some but really punishing to others, and I think it's better to shoot for easier answerlines with harder clues rather than harder answerlines. And while I do also feel that the two tossups you mentioned weren't "worthwhile" to my tastes, it probably was very worthwhile to fans of these artists in Quiz Bowl.

ICT is supposed to be challenging. Much in the way I wouldn't want to water down literature questions so that they are more convertable and appealing to science players, I wouldn't want to do the same for people who don't have much interest in listening to popular music. I don't disagree with the fact that one has to and should approach writing pop culture questions in ways that are different from most academic topics, but restricting the canon to the most mainstream topics because of this seems like an entirely antithetical way to engage with pop culture in a game that ought to and always has been about deep artistic and intellectual exploration.

[AlexLi]

The lead-in to the unit interval tossup is not unique to the unit interval; any closed interval can be the fiber of a compact Mobius strip over S-1. I think this clue came from the Wolfram page on fiber bundles, which is just giving an example fiber bundle construction of the Mobius strip (there are many). Indeed, the Wikipedia page for fiber bundles describes a Mobius strip as "a bundle of the line segment over the circle," which is more generally accurate. Also, I don't really see the point of requiring the words "unit interval" here, since 99% of the time in math, this set is called [0,1], or just I. Great idea though!

Hi Jeremy, thanks for your constructive feedback and I'm glad you liked the idea! I was the writer for this question and was responsible for choosing the clues in that question except the homotopy clue (which Seth added in). I indeed obtained the information from the Wolfram page, and based on further research it seems that you are correct. I apologize for the oversight on my part and definitely should have at least added a prompt or accept directive for answers like "(closed) intervals" or "line segments" before "Hilbert cube". If you have any other feedback for the math in the set I would appreciate it. Thanks!

[Grizzle]

The protest committee did end up accepting the descriptive answers for Mia Wallace.

Not to second guess the protest committee, but I am curious about the rationale here. Mia Wallace seemed like a reasonable enough answer line to me, and I believe that the two members of my team who had seen the movie knew her name. I was under the impression that the general convention is to only allow that kind of descriptive answerline in a film or literary work when the character is unnamed or has some kind of strange scenario where their name is unimportant for some other reason. Mia’s name is said at least a couple of times in the movie if I recall correctly, and she’s actually on screen for significantly longer than Marsellus Wallace according to, admittedly, the first tweet I found (https://twitter.com/MatthewAStewart/sta ... 3374692352). I’m not sure why this relational answer (i.e. “Marsellus Wallace’s wife”) needs to be acceptable for her and not, say, the majority of secondary characters in literary works. Even if there were a lot of powervulches, I am not sure I see why that warrants breaking what I would understand as a general rule that would preclude accepting it.

I think Matt Jackson’s point about “Tom Cruise in Risky Business” is a fair one—I second that we all certainly see a lot of people talk that way about a one off movie like that example, and perhaps that might be a type of acceptable answerline worth at least thinking about sometimes (I leave that to the people who write more movie questions). I do think Pulp Fiction is contextually a different case though, being remembered and iconic in large part for its cast of whacky characters of which I would expect non-quiz bowl movie lovers to be able to name several. Indeed, it sounds like we are accepting answers from people who remember Marsellus’ name but not Mia’s, even though she is arguably as big or a bigger part of the film.

Perhaps too much quibbling about a minor point, and curious to hear more of the opposing logic!

[skewit]

Could I see the tossup on Chazelle, please?

[mdu]

I resisted buzzing on the "South China" answerline for multiple clues because I had the conception that it was south of the Yangtze somehow, but also possibly still in the North Chinese plain and wasn't sure if we wanted the Yangtze delta, Jiangnan, etc. Finally buzzed on Deng's tour. Could I see the question and answerline?

Two other tossups I remember also being somewhat vague, but also description-acceptable were the Chinese proselytization and silver (coinage?) ones, which I'd be interested in seeing as well.

I agree with the points above about the Moscow terrorist attack. Most people, even engaged with the news, would probably have seen it described in the context of being in the northwest of Moscow, or even the venue name (Crocus), rather than the city name. This was one of the specific CE topics we prepared for in the car and none of us knew the name.

Finally, while I don't have a firm opinion on whether descriptions of Mia Wallace should be accepted, there is an early dialogue where the two male leads mostly refer to her through her relations to Marsellus, and thus it is quite possible to remember the character primarily through that. If that was clued in the tossup, more so, but I was a bit tuned out while it was being read. That being said of course, her name is clearly introduced and a choice to prompt on that description seems fine.

[yeah viv talk nah]

Could I see the tossups on denim and "Subterranean Homesick Blues"?

I felt pretty hard done by the tossup on denim, since Marlon Brando's look in The Wild One is just as, if not more, iconic for the leather jacket as the denim jeans. I expect that the wording in the clue is pointing more to the latter, but it was frustrating in-game, since I would have said denim if there had been something like "it's not leather, but ..." to clarify.

The tossup on Cohen was also pretty frustrating to play. Did the giveaway really need to suddenly mention Sacha Baron Cohen (that too, by literally saying it was "paired with Baron") after cluing a bunch of academics (IIRC)? Maybe there's some underlying link among them all I'm not aware of, but in-game this felt like the writer just wanted to get a laugh at the expense of players who (rightfully) weren't expecting the sudden turn to pop culture.

I enjoyed the tossup on The Society of the Spectacle and the bonus parts on W. Eugene Smith and jidaigeki films.

[Important Bird Area]

Could I see the tossup on Chazelle, please?

A scientist with this surname created the soft heap and used it in an algorithm with inverse Ackermann function complexity that is the most efficient finder of minimum spanning trees. Computer scientist Bernard shares this surname with his son, who directed an adaptation of a James R. Hansen biography that opted not to depict its (*) Ryan Gosling-played central character planting a flag on the moon. For 10 points—give the surname of the director of First Man, as well as Whiplash and La La Land.

[Important Bird Area]

I resisted buzzing on the "South China" answerline for multiple clues because I had the conception that it was south of the Yangtze somehow, but also possibly still in the North Chinese plain and wasn't sure if we wanted the Yangtze delta, Jiangnan, etc. Finally buzzed on Deng's tour. Could I see the question and answerline?

Two other tossups I remember also being somewhat vague, but also description-acceptable were the Chinese proselytization and silver (coinage?) ones, which I'd be interested in seeing as well.

The phrase "garments and headdresses moving" to this place refers to a migration of Jin nobility after the Uprising of the Five Barbarians. Wang Hui painted twelve scrolls depicting the Kangxi Emperor's politically fraught "inspection" of this place. During a journey named for this region, an analogy to (*) black and white cats was made to defend Reform and Opening Up. Deng Xiaoping "toured"—for 10 points—what namesake of the latter half of the Song Dynasty, a broad region of China below the Yangtze?

answer: south (or South China; accept Southern Song; accept garments and headdresses moving south; accept zhongguo nanbu; prompt on "Yangtze" or "Yangtze basin;" reject "Guangdong" or "Shenzhen")

Absalom Sydenstricker lamented his failure at this goal by admitting "they are increasing on us." The Big Swords Society murdered two Germans with this goal in the Juye Incident. While spreading tracts to further this goal in Canton, Edwin Stevens influenced a failed (*) civil service aspirant. Memoirs titled The Exile and Fighting Angel were written by Pearl S. Buck about her parents, who moved to China for this purpose. For 10 points—what was the primary goal of missionaries to Asia?

answer: converting people to Christianity (or creating Christians; or spreading Christianity; or converting Chinese people to Christianity; before "missionaries," accept missionary work; ask "to what religion?" on "conversion")

This material flowed out along a route from the Samanid empire to Europe, leading to a shortage to which A. C. S. Peacock attributes the Samanids' decline. The Spillings Hoard is the largest of 700 Viking hoards of this material found on Gotland. An object of this material depicting (*) Maria Theresa was circulated through the Arab world until the 1900s. During antiquity, this metal was mined at Laurium, funding the Athenian navy. For 10 points—what precious metal was once mined at Potosi?

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

The tossup on Cohen was also pretty frustrating to play. Did the giveaway really need to suddenly mention Sacha Baron Cohen (that too, by literally saying it was "paired with Baron") after cluing a bunch of academics (IIRC)? Maybe there's some underlying link among them all I'm not aware of, but in-game this felt like the writer just wanted to get a laugh at the expense of players who (rightfully) weren't expecting the sudden turn to pop culture.

? Are you thinking about the question that went to clue autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen ? (who to be fair is sacha's cousin)

[yeah viv talk nah]

The tossup on Cohen was also pretty frustrating to play. Did the giveaway really need to suddenly mention Sacha Baron Cohen (that too, by literally saying it was "paired with Baron") after cluing a bunch of academics (IIRC)? Maybe there's some underlying link among them all I'm not aware of, but in-game this felt like the writer just wanted to get a laugh at the expense of players who (rightfully) weren't expecting the sudden turn to pop culture.

? Are you thinking about the question that went to clue autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen ? (who to be fair is sacha's cousin)

Oof, this is pretty embarrassing on my part lol. The buzz was at Baron in my room and I assumed it was Sacha being clued. Sorry for the yells-at-cloud rant!

[Grizzle]

Finally, while I don't have a firm opinion on whether descriptions of Mia Wallace should be accepted, there is an early dialogue where the two male leads mostly refer to her through her relations to Marsellus, and thus it is quite possible to remember the character primarily through that. If that was clued in the tossup, more so, but I was a bit tuned out while it was being read. That being said of course, her name is clearly introduced and a choice to prompt on that description seems fine.

This is certainly true, though I don’t think that I’m persuaded that it warrants accepting the descriptive answer. That scene is certainly iconic, and was the first or one of the first clues I believe, but there are later equally iconic scenes where Mia is a named on-screen character (e.g., the Jackrabbit Slims dancing scene, where she announces her name before the dance). All of which is to say, I don’t think its important to reward people who only remember one of the scenes from the movie where she is discussed impersonally, and not the extended sequence where she is a named main character. I’ve been trying to think of another example (and I’m open to suggestions), but to stick with Tarantino, it seems to me that it would be like accepting “the girl under the floorboards in the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds” for a tossup on the character Shoshanna Dreyfus—that’s an accurate description that demonstrates knowledge of one of the most iconic (and earliest) scenes of the movie, but it ignores the fact that Shoshanna appears beyond that one scene and has a name as a principal character of the movie.

Put a slightly different way, for much of the first act of the film, Marsellus is an unseen object of discussion, while Mia is a lead character—does this mean we should accept “Mia’s husband” for Marsellus? I don’t think that this is the correct approach.

[Cheynem]

Not to flog a dead horse, but my two cents on the question (not mine, although very good clues):

-I would not accept a descriptive answer for "Mia Wallace" like "Marsellus' wife"--that opens up a lot of problems as to what actually is a proper description ("Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction" is even more descriptive, for example). I might accept "Mrs. Wallace" because that is her legal name.

-The real question to me is more about thinking of tossups on character names. I've seen Pulp Fiction, recognize a fair share of the clues, but would be hard pressed to quickly remember Mia Wallace's name. Now, that doesn't mean the question is bad or the answerline is bad--as has been correctly said, she says her name in the film a lot. But at least for me, and presumably others, remembering character names, if they're not like a recurring character or a rather unique name ("Goldfinger," "Popeye Doyle," "The Dude"), can be pretty hard. Even the protagonists of pretty well known films can be hard to remember if they have a basic, "normal" name. Sometimes if I'm trying to ask about a character I feel like may have a name that may escape players, I ask about the film but only cluing the character. Or I ask about the performer. But sometimes you have no choice. I don't think Mia Wallace, especially for ICT, really is so hard an answerline it demands that the writer take a different tactic, but I also think it's something to consider (may also be a weird/sexist blind spot of me, as I remember Vincent, Jules, Marsellus very easily, although I'm blanking on Bruce Willis' character's name too.)

[henrygoff]

Not to beat this horse even further, especially as someone who didn't attend ICT, but Mia is referred to as "Marsellus Wallace's Wife" in the title card of the vignette featuring her and Vincent. I'm not sure how the question was clued or what NAQT's (sub)title-to-answerline policy is, but I think it lends some credence to people who buzzed with that answer.

[theMoMA]

The player gave the surname "Wallace" and the fact she was Marcellus's wife (and, as mentioned, the character is referred to as "Mrs. Wallace" and "Marcellus Wallace's wife" in the film); the protest committee judged that the surname plus the description made the answer acceptable, noting the analogy to how "Nancy Pelosi's husband" was accepted for "Paul Pelosi." Given that the response provided identified the correct surname and a disambiguating description, I think it was fair to accept, while still rejecting pure descriptions without a surname such as "Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction" or whatever.

[Important Bird Area]

Could I see the tossups on denim and "Subterranean Homesick Blues"?

Members of the Italian Parliament wore this fabric to protest the Supreme Court's 1999 overturning of a rape ruling because the victim wore a garment made of this fabric. Jacob Davis placed copper rivets along seams in an item made of this fabric, which Marlon Brando popularized by appearing in The (*) Wild One wearing a pair of 501s. A "Canadian tuxedo" consists of two items made of this twill fabric, which is named for its creation in Nimes. For 10 points—name this fabric used to make jeans.

This song's last verse references Robert Browning's "Up at a Villa-Down in the City" by rhyming "candles," "sandals," "scandals," and "handles." The video for Weird Al's "Bob" apes this song's video, which originally opened D. A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back and shows the singer holding (*) cue cards featuring its lyrics. This Beat-inspired song opens the album Bringing It All Back Home. For 10 points—what song that begins "Johnny's in the basement, mixin' up the medicine" was the first U.S. top-40 hit for Bob Dylan?

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I do not think this one tossup at all reflects the general feel of the history distribution, where I think we mixed in a larger number of social + cultural history topics than we did in previous years. A lot of my editing work was kicking and replacing questions until the great-man-bowl quotient was down to an acceptable level. The tossups written for this purpose specifically were: Mesopotamian scribes, veils, the CSA and the UK (carried over from last year), the Burr Conspiracy, the South of China, vampires, the historiographical work of the Andersons, the Plague of Athens, the Teamsters union, and tulips from the Ottoman Tulip period. We also revamped the history distribution this past summer to allow for a larger amount of world history. I'm curious how people felt about these questions + if the effort to ask these topics in a different way came through.

Yeah, we're reaching de gustibus territory on the Civil War stuff, but for the record I basically agree with Mike that the 500-character cap kind of washed out the (marginally more interesting than expected!) context on some of the clues, resulting in a more "tactics-bowl-like" experience on a very hard answer. I am convinced it could be done well with 8 lines though.

In general I think a 16ish-packet set only needs to ask about each of these conflicts about 3-5 times, ideally from very different vantage points; 8-10 questions is a bit much.

I'm fine with a mixture of older and more recent music in the pop culture -- in fact, I was somewhat wary that a bunch of the pop music was too old for today's collegiate field (in the DII final, e.g., I'm not sure how many of today's kids are The Police [band] listeners). For someone like Bob Dylan you can argue (at least one Scandinavian committee has argued) that it's reached a quasi-art status and is pretty accessible for study. And for recent hits you definitely can write questions that have interesting clues testing depth of knowledge (the Taylor Swift fandom certainly has extreme depths of knowledge to plumb). But in either case you do want to make sure the clues are somewhat interesting and at least allude to why, In Today's Fragmented Pop Culture Environment, this particular piece of media is or should be of note. The "Last Night" question did that pretty directly by saying that it's what you get when you google "biggest hit of 2023" anyway...

[etotheipi]

May I see the usura TU?